My Theology of Children in a Nutshell

Often people want to know a quick answer for why I believe in baptising infants and what my theology of parenting and children’s ministry is.

Here is my short answer I wrote for a friend some years ago:

In terms of biblical theology, the Old Covenant clearly had a discipling model for children – children of believers were born into and included at every level of spiritual activity (not an evangelistic model). If you read the whole New Testament in light of this model, there is no repudiation, only an assumption that it continues which is made explicit at several key points (Acts 2, Eph 6, 1 Cor 7).

This theology was accepted across the board by all Reformation traditions (excluding the Anabaptists who were fairly fringe). It is only in the rise of Enlightenment individualism and the experientialism of the Great Awakening do you start to see the Baptistic exclusion of children drift into Protestant Evangelical culture – to where it has become the default cultural assumption amongst Western Christians today.